It’s the PINOT stupid!

Recently, I was lucky enough to attend the 7th Annual Passion for Pinot Summit. This was an opportunity for the Pinot Noir lover, Press & Trade to get together and have a Pinot Noir Taste-Off.

This is a unique event that really pulls the lid off of wine judging, and allows the average Josephine to become a wine judge for a day. While the officially judges taste 32 wines each day for an eternity until the contenders were whittled down, the attendees at the Summit were given the top 44 wines to taste blind in The Final Showdown. Additionally, the attendees at the Pinot Summit got to vote on our top 3 wines, in a Girls vs. Boys challenge, that shows us that there really is a difference in biological palates.

Below are my tasting notes from my favorites, plus the group winners by gender, and the over all judges winners for kicks. I’ve also included some tasting notes, just cuz, well, they help! Here are my 90+ pointers.

Once the business was out of the way, the wines were unveiled, and we were invited to the Grand Tasting reception. This was when we matched our favorite wines, previously only identified as colors, to their names. This was also when we could see the medal winners from the official competition, as well as try some other offerings from the participating wineries.